As everyone knows, quantification and the application of statistics is ubiquitous in the behavioral and social sciences. The key issue for our discussion is studies based on aggregate data, where individuals are anonymous except with respect to attributes that are quantified in the studies. Probabilities and other sophisticated statistical/mathematical techniques may be utilized. Psychometrics fits in here, too, in that it produces highly refined techniques for measuring individual attributes (e.g., intelligence). All of these procedures without doubt have a place in the social sciences, and they have great pragmatic value -- as any insurance company knows. Their important role in demography, epidemiology, criminology, public health, education, and medicine is unquestionable.
But what is not so clear is just how aggregate data and the techniques associated with them fit into scientific explanation. Does an economic model based on aggregate behavior provide an explanation of consumer behavior? Or is it necessary first to identify and describe the generative and social structures that underlie consumer behavior? From the point of view of the new heuristic, generalizations and descriptions based on aggregate data do not in themselves explain, however useful they may be diagnostically or predictively; they are data to be explained.[7]
There are two common errors here. One is to view the relationships among aggregate data as explanatory, and the other is to assume that such findings tell us something about individual behavior. But to take one example of the first misunderstanding, Durkheim's finding that societies where anomie is widespread have higher suicide rates does not explain the incidence of suicide, but in turn requires an explanation. Durkheim's empirical finding would not have a place in a theory of suicide, although it might be explained by such a theory. Similarly, the finding that ghetto children are more apt to end up in prison than are children of affluent families does not in any way explain how criminal behavior comes about; it is a datum which requires explanation.
Our understanding of suicide and of crime depends heavily upon the discovery of generative mechanisms, processes, and structures, and these are only indirectly related to knowledge involving aggregate data. At the same time, our discussion should not be misconstrued as arguing for an asocial, psychological reductionism. This is the other error; it is sometimes mistakenly supposed that individual psychology is sufficient to comprehend persons and their behavior. We have already hinted at what some of the requirements for an individual psychology might be; let us turn now to examine that important field and to see how the new heuristic bears on it.
The final task of psychology, as we see it, in some ways brings together all of the foregoing and has for itself the task of seeking to understand individual persons and their behavioral patterns as they occur in the concrete social world. Here, characteristically, clinical, humanist, and psychoanalytical approaches find their place.
Recall the conflict within psychology over the problem of consciousness and the explanation of behavior (above). Humanistic psychological orientations rejected behaviorist and reductionist strategies pertaining to consciousness and put the concept of the person in the center of their frame. They thus urged, rightly, we think, that to understand persons we need to adopt a "hermeneutics" approach, that we must seek "to define correctly the interpretations of the agent" (Taylor, 1973). This insight, shared by phenomenology, action-theory and interpretative sociologies argues that to understand a person we must grasp the person's meanings and understandings, the agent's vision of the world, his or her plans, purposes, motivations and interests
Except as a counter to the claims of those with radical behaviorist orientation, this idea does not demand esoteric philosophical argument, although a great deal of recent philosophy, from Wittgenstein to existential phenomenology and critical theory, has provided pertinent philosophical arguments. A philosophical defense is not required because ordinary experience confirms that the hermeneutical approach is the approach which we all employ quite ordinarily in understanding one another, and in explaining our own behavior and that of others. Our ordinary pre-scientific understandings, in a taken-for-granted way, are efforts "to define correctly the inter- pretations of an agent." So there is nothing mysterious here, no special methods involved, no mystical empathy, and no witnessing of the other's consciousness. Indeed, as Giddens sharply put it: "it is the very ontological condition of human life in society as such" (Giddens, 1976, p. 19).
Moreover, we know a great deal about one another; otherwise, it would be hard to imagine how we could get along at all. What might be surprising to a Martian investigator -- some real discovery about human motivation or desire -- will not be a discovery to us. This knowledge is reflected in human languages whose concepts and distinctions are the product of a long evolutionary and historical experience, an experience in which, as Scriven has noted, "the easy material" regarding human understanding has been "winnowed out" and where the "nonsense" has not survived the press of continued experience (Scriven, 1964).
Of course, our ordinary concepts and distinctions remain revisable; some might be abandoned or modified, others added through incorporating insights made by remarkable individuals, poets, novelists, philosophers and of course psychologists. Consider here the impact of Freud on our ordinary self-understandings. Moreover, to say that we know a great deal about one another, is not to say that our understandings are perfect, or even as adequate as we might like. And no doubt, a too characteristic narrowness and provinciality is to some extent, at least, broken down by humanist education (Joynson, 1974).
Finally, since our everyday understandings are interpretations, in any particular instance we can be wrong. There are two aspects to this fallibility. The first regards the entire shift of modern epistemology and its rejection of the idea of "brute data." It is by now really commonplace that there is no such thing as a non-interpreted "given" which can serve as the "foundation" of knowledge. This applies not only as regards our knowledge of the other person as agent, but to our understanding of the natural world as well. That is, all our perceptions, categories and frames of meaning are mediated and are culturally and historically loaded. But if this denies the possibility of some point of Archimedes for knowledge, it does not eliminate the possibility of "objectivity," construed here as warranted assertibility. Nor, accordingly, need we be driven to a morass of relativism.
The other aspect of our fallibiliy stems from the continuous possibility of self-deception, so that as there is no chance for incorrigible knowledge of others, neither is there the possibility of incorrigible self-knowledge (Solomon, 1974).
These points raise some very crucial questions for psychology as a science. But it is not the question which defined the conflict between humanists and their opponents. The question is not whether some hermeneutic psychological science might replace our ordinary understandings of ourselves and others, understandings which we regularly if imperfectly have available to us. The question rather is, what would be involved in achieving a better understanding, a better account of our acts and the acts of others? Put bluntly, it is a question of what is the character of hermeneutical science?
Much depends, of course, on what one means by "science." It is an unfortunate fact, yet still a fact, that "science" functions honorifically, and as cause and consequence important political (institutional) dimensions involved. Scientific knowledge is too frequently thought of as the only kind of knowledge, or at least as the best -- truest, surest. At the same time, having the credentials associated with the acquisition of such knowledge gives us access not otherwise available, to research monies, to authority, to status. These political dimensions are too complex to pursue here. But as regards the idea of scientific knowledge, as we noted, the entire drift of current re-examinations of science and its epistemology makes the claims of science much less secure than empiricists demands would ever have allowed. In the new heuristic, scientific knowledge is much closer to that knowledge which is more familiarly accessible, through "commonsense," literature, and other modes of experience (Bernstein, 1976, esp. Part IV).
To be sure, the idea of science as a mode of controlled inquiry remains and is important. The public, critical and systematic character of scientific inquiry must be acknowledged, and in this sense, hermeneutical science differs from that sort of hermeneutical understanding which we take for granted and with which it is continuous. But more can be said.
On the view of science sketched in the first section of this paper, we distinguished between those sciences which aim at discovering the structures and mechanisms at work in the world, and on the other hand, those sciences which apply this knowledge to explain, predict and diagnose the phenomena of the world.
Meteorology applies knowledge derived from physics, astronomy, geology and other sciences to offer explanations and predictions of concrete meteorological phenomena, e.g., the cause of some drought. Many systems are involved in this event, including often, the past activities of human actors, as e.g., in the Sahil. And we recognize that meteorology is not an exact science. History, similarly, seeks to explain historical events as concrete episodes involving particular persons and societies, in particular times and places. It uses knowledge derived from the special social sciences, a host of "auxiliary sciences," e.g., numismatics, paleography, and of course, knowledge drawn from common experience as well.
A hermeneutic science of individual persons is then the psychological analogue to history or to meteorology. It is engaged in understanding the concrete person and his or her life history and particular patterns of behavior, including as reflexively applied, self-understanding. But evidently, while the task remains hermeneutic and close to our common task as social beings, as a scientific effort it requires also that the inquirer utilize whatever special knowledge is available regarding implicated psychological structures and mechanisms (including psychoanalytic mechanisms) as these operated in the individual biography. And since the person is born and matures in a social world, this understanding inevitably also includes references to what is known about social structures pertinent to that biography. Finally, in contrast to our pre-scientific mode of understanding, it seems that the inquirer would be constrained by the systematic, public demands of establishing the evidential credibility of his conclusions.
Although this picture may seem somewhat idealized, it conforms closely, we believe, to the actual practices of clinical person-oriented psychology. Moreover, it helps to explain both the fallibility and uncertainty which characterizes such practice and the feeling, sometimes hostily expressed, that such psychology is more like a critically informed and systematic application of commonsense than a radically unique and special "science." Worthy of emphasis here is that, given the correctness of the view of science defended here no other more rigorous person-oriented science is possible.
One must also distinguish the explanatory, diagnostic and therapeutic aspects of such science. As an explanatory science, the parallel to history is extremely close. Insofar as history seeks to explain some particular event, it offers an account which traces and connects the complicated conjunctions of motivated acts, and their intended and unintended consequences within a structurally limited arena of space and time. The account generally takes the form of a narrative and the explanation requires also the ability of the historian to enter that situation and to communicate to his audience not only what happened, but what it was like (Hexter, 1971, esp. pp. 208-221).
Moreover, the analogue can be pressed as regards Everyman the historian versus the professional historian. Hexter argues that in writing history, the historian appeal to two "records": first, to the record of the past in concrete evidence, "whatever is publically accessible to examination and evaluation" (p. 66f.), and to the second record, viz., "everything that historians bring to their confrontation with the record of the past" (p. 79). This "second record" of course, every inquirer brings in confronting the world, whether of nature, of society, of individual persons. For Hexter, however, a key difference between Everyman the historian and the professional concerns the "treatment" of the first record, "a difference in the grounds on which they expect and receive credence" (p. 65). And so with Everyman the psychologist and his professional analogue, the clinician, who must be far more critical with respect to what is taken as descriptive fact or evidence.
Similar considerations apply to the diagnostic aspect except that emphasis has now shifted to what is wrong or amiss. This still demands an understanding of causes. Diagnoses, of course, are called for when, from an ordinary point of view, the other is enigmatic, their behaviors (beliefs, etc.) are anomalous, bizarre, unintelligible and/or, the other seeks or needs help. It is thus also that therapy enters. So as to preclude misunderstanding here, it seems premature to rule out specific therapeutic strategies and techniques, pending at least, a better grasp of the psychological structures and mechanisms which are implicated. This last observation points to the last difficulty as regards hermeneutic science.
It may be that we shall not be able to achieve a significantly better grasp of the psychological structures implicated in such cases, that in a real sense, these remain, from a theoretical point of view, intractable. Nevertheless, even under these conditions, it may be desirable to have persons specifically qualified to help persons deal with such problems. Participation in self-knowledge, use of behavioral techniques proved efficacious in practice, and other strategies and technologies are surely legitimate to the extent that they are ameliorative.
It may be, more optimistically, that as we learn more about basic human powers and competencies and tile structures which underly them, we shall learn more about the causes of in competencies, disabilites and the like. Some of these, asphasia, e.g. are manifestly neural, but some may not be. In any case, the diagnostic and therapeutic sciences, like medicine, require knowledge both of the concrete individual and of the relevant structures, even if unlike medicine, the problems which call for psychological amelioration need not be necessarily physiological or, at least, not physiologically manifest.